Plachta and his team developed a micromachined cuff that wraps around the vagal nerve a nerve found in the neck that exchanges critical physiological information between the brain
and experimentally some psychiatric conditions (see Brain Pacemakers and Brain Implants Can Rest Misfiring Circuits).
They may be helpful even for such unlikely conditions as bladder dysfunction and rheumatoid arthritis (see Implanted Device Controls Rheumatoid arthritis).
and passed along to the brain. Cochlear implants use up to 22 platinum electrodes to stimulate the auditory nerve;
whether it for deep-brain stimulation in Parkinson disease, or retinal implants for the blind, there is already neural damage,
scientists at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC) have reported clinical evidence supporting the role of a novel biomarker in diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.
Glutathione (GSH), the biomarker, is a natural antioxidant that protects the brain from damage. Researchers claim that those suffering from the disease have reduced GSH as compared to the healthy individuals."
a region of the brain, yielded 100%specificity and sensitivity for distinguishing Alzheimer's disease and healthy controls."
can zap your brain to make you feel either calm or energised. Users stick the device, called Thync, onto their front temple.
Users can also adjust the strength of the brain-zapping. Each programme follows a pattern of greater and lesser intensity
the small sensor devices send signals to the brain.""In a healthy foot, skin receptors carry out this function
"The sensors tell the brain there is a foot and the wearer has the impression that it rolls off the ground when he walks.
information is guided from the prothesis to the brain, rather than the other way around. In addition to increasing balance and safety, the prosthesis provides another remarkable function:
because the brain gets increasingly sensitive as it seeks information about the missing limb.""Plus the amputation is tied often to a traumatic experience like an accident or illness,
The advantage of the"feeling prosthesis"is that the brain once again receives real data and can stop its frantic search."
the small sensor devices send signals to the brain.""In a healthy foot, skin receptors carry out this function
"The sensors tell the brain there is a foot and the wearer has the impression that it rolls off the ground when he walks.
information is guided from the prothesis to the brain, rather than the other way around. In addition to increasing balance and safety, the prosthesis provides another remarkable function:
because the brain gets increasingly sensitive as it seeks information about the missing limb.""Plus the amputation is tied often to a traumatic experience like an accident or illness,
The advantage of the"feeling prosthesis"is that the brain once again receives real data and can stop its frantic search."
A new technology that reads brainwaves to allow users to change TV channels with their mind has been developed in the UK.
For its latest project, the BBC took a simple low-cost brainwave reading headset and, working with UK-based user experience studio This Place, created a`Mind Control TV'prototype.
using nothing but their brainwaves. A first trial run saw 10 BBC staff members try out the app,
An important potential benefit that brainwave technology might offer is the ability to improve the accessibility of media content to people with disabilities.
or suffering locked-insyndrome may increasingly be able to use brain-computer interfaces to get a better experience of digital
The electroencephalography (EEG) brainwave reading headset has one small sensor that rests on a user's forehead
These sensors measure electrical activity in the brain. In the case of this experimental app, a user can select either`concentration'or`meditation'as the brain control mechanism.
If the user selects`concentration, 'the headset and app monitors their level of concentration and a`volume bar'of brainwaves is displayed on the screen,
to visually illustrate their level of concentration n
#New breath test may detect pneumonia LONDON: A simple breath test can now detect if a critically ill patient is infected with pneumonia or not.
but actually on your brainwaves. This truly remarkable concept is even more impressive because of Easton young age.
And that is exactly why Anthromod completely relies on 3d printing technology. his reads right about 10 channels of the brain,
and then use the raw actual brainwaves and focus to actually close the hand or open the clamp or hand. aston and his prosthetics.
These brainwave-based prosthetics are also remarkably easy to operate through a wireless headset. good example is had we actually an amputee use the wireless brainwave headset to control a hand,
#MEDPRIN 3d prints world first biological meningioma Redura for use in brain surgery While 3d bioprinting innovations sound lifesaving and revolutionary, most are still years away from impacting ordinary
Called MEDPRIN, they have developed the world first 3d printed biological meningioma called Redura a replica of tissue covering the brain
Usually, when patients undergo brain surgery, doctor first need to cut through a layer of protective tissue between the skull and the brain.
When patching everything up, they'paste'an artificial Meningioma layer on the area in question and sew everything together.
and successfully used in brain surgeries everywhere, they are not biological and have a tendency to disrupt a patient life-as most artificial meningioma layers contain metal parts
the brain blood vessels crawl into the structures. Over a course of up to three months, a completely new Meningioma beings to grow,
but that is all that is needed for a protective layer between the skull and the brain.
and sow it together. edura is hydrophobic with a more than 90 contact angle that acts as a watertight barrier for the prevention of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leakage,
It can of course be viewed at 360°and supports 3d sensors such as Kinect, Leap Motion, the Emotive Brain Sensor and the Occipital Structure 3d scanner.
The ability to make individual neurons visible could be of great importance, for example, in the precise mapping of the brain, according to Pantazis.
"But if you want to study the brain or develop the tools to explore the brain-machine interface,
you need to stick something into the body. When releasing the electronics scaffold completely from the fabrication substrate,
'"Though not the first attempts at implanting electronics into the brain-deep brain stimulation has been used to treat a variety of disorders for decades-the nano-fabricated scaffolds operate on a completely different scale."
"Existing techniques are crude relative to the way the brain is wired, "Lieber explained.""Whether it's a silicon probe or flexible polymers...
researchers hope to better understand how the brain and other tissues react to the injectable electronics over longer periods.
greatly diminishing their ability to deliver blood to the heart muscle and the brain. The condition
sewn into pillows to monitor brain signals or applied to interactive textiles with heating and cooling capabilities. revious technologies have achieved similar functionalities,
#New Tool Generates Images of Brain Inside at Nanoscale Resolution A new imaging tool developed by Boston scientists could do for the brain
In the first demonstration of how the technology works, published July 30 in the journal Cell, the researchers look inside the brain of an adult mouse at a scale previously unachievable, generating images at a nanoscale resolution.
The inventors'long-term goal is to make the resource available to the scientific community in the form of a national brain observatory."
"The researchers have begun the process of mining their imaging data by looking first at an area of the brain that receives sensory information from mouse whiskers,
"The complexity of the brain is much more than what we had imagined ever, "says study first author Narayanan"Bobby"Kasthuri, of the Boston University School of medicine."
"The researchers see great potential in the tool's ability to answer questions about what a neurological disorder actually looks like in the brain,
as well as what makes the human brain different from other animals and different between individuals. Who we become is very much a product of the connections our neurons make in response to various life experiences.
and someone with schizophrenia would be a leap in our understanding of how our brains shape who we are (or vice versa).
the scientists are now partnering with Argonne National Laboratory with the hopes of creating a national brain laboratory that neuroscientists around the world can access within the next few years."
in order to avoid permanent damage to the brain and other organs. This requires accurate monitoring of oxygenation during the first days of life.
which send the information to the brain. In a test, two weeks after surgery, Mr Flynn was able to detect the pattern of horizontal,
#Missing link found between brain, immune system--with major disease implications Vessels directly connecting brain, lymphatic system exist despite decades of doctrine that they don't.
'In a stunning discovery that overturns decades of textbook teaching, researchers at the University of Virginia School of medicine have determined that the brain is connected directly to the immune system by vessels previously thought not to exist.
"Instead of asking,'How do we study the immune response of the brain?''''Why do multiple sclerosis patients have the immune attacks?'
Because the brain is like every other tissue connected to the peripheral immune system through meningeal lymphatic vessels,
"said Jonathan Kipnis, Phd, professor in the UVA Department of Neuroscience and director of UVA's Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG)."
a postdoctoral fellow in Kipnis'lab. The vessels were detected after Louveau developed a method to mount a mouse's meninges-the membranes covering the brain-on a single slide
'"As to how the brain's lymphatic vessels managed to escape notice all this time, Kipnis described them as"very well hidden
Alzheimer's, Autism, MS and Beyond The unexpected presence of the lymphatic vessels raises a tremendous number of questions that now need answers, both about the workings of the brain and the diseases that plague it.
"In Alzheimer's, there are accumulations of big protein chunks in the brain, "Kipnis said.""We think they may be accumulating in the brain
because they're not being removed efficiently by these vessels.""He noted that the vessels look different with age,
which send information to the brain for interpretation as images. Bipolar cells are continuously active, a characteristic few other neurons share.
#Study paves way for genetics-first approach to brain cancer treatment Two US studies have identified specific genetic mutations in gliomas
which develop from the glial cells of the brain and spine, and make up 80 percent of malignant brain tumours.
Patients who develop gliomas are treated usually with a combination of radiotherapy, surgery and chemotherapy; however it is currently difficult to work out how useful these treatments will be.
#Miniature brain'organoids'offer model for autism Scientists have grown miniature brains out of stem cells from people with autism,
These tiny brain'organoids'three-dimensional clusters of cells, just a few millimetres across mimic the brains of early fetuses
This is the first study to use brain organoids to investigate the disorder which is characterised by social and communication difficulties.'
and then encouraged them to grow into clusters of brain neurons. These clusters are similar the brain of a fetus during the second trimester
called the telencephalon.''I immediately realised that this could be used to reenact stages of neurodevelopment that were almost impossible to study in humans,
'Professor Vaccarino told The Scientist. Despite the fact that autism is a complex collection of disorders, the researchers found several clear differences between the brain organoids from the autistic boys and those from their fathers.
In particular, there were more inhibitory neurons (which quieten down brain activity) compared to excitatory neurons (which amplify brain activity).
Tracing this back to the increased expression of a gene involved in early brain development Foxg1 the researchers were then able to restore a normal balance of inhibitory and excitatory neurons by suppressing the expression of this gene in the autistic brain organoids.
Neuroscientist Dr Alysson Muotri of the University of California, San diego, who was involved not in the study,
told The Scientist the results were impressive and surprising.''If someone had asked me, I would have said,
#Workings of Working memory Revealed Our understanding of how a key part of the human brain works may be wrong.
That the conclusion of a team at Oxford university Centre for Human brain Activity (OHBA), published in journal Trends in cognitive sciences.
and respond to immediate demands was underpinned by stable brain patterns. The OHBA team discovered that instead,
the areas of the brain responsible for working memory are changing all the time. Dr. Mark Stokes, who led the research,
while brain activity is constantly changing?''Previously it was believed that in order to carry out a task, there would be constant brain activity related to the goal of that task.
In a review of fifty years of studies using monkeys, the OHBA team found that
when there was no brain activity related to the goal. Yet, as soon as it was necessary, these ctivity-silentperiods ended
and the brain activity could be observed again. Dr. Stokes said:''Say you are looking for your coffee cup.
your brain also has to process that task. If you can stop the'coffee cup'activity
while the brain works on navigating round the house, then start it again when you see the cup, that more efficient.'
The brain uses around 20 percent of the energy youe burning each day, but it difficult to get that energy into the brain.
Every bit of brain activity is using some of that, so if you can temporarily suspend some activity in your working memory the energy can be applied to an immediately relevant task.'
'This may mean that working memory is closer to long-term memory in the way it functions. You may be able to remember your tenth birthday,
but there is no constant pattern of brain activity that is your tenth birthday memory.''What we don know is how the brain is retaining that information in a stable way in the activity-silent periods.
There must be an underlying mechanism, but it is difficult to detect that mechanism because the equipment we use at the moment measures brain activity it can see what isn active.'
'The challenge for the future is developing new ways to measure the underlying activity-silent states that could be important for working memory.'
'The team's work has been made possible not only by improvements in the technology for recording brain activity but also the OHBA's approach to the huge amounts of data from dozens of studies,
and more effectively in order to improve our understanding of how the brain works. Dr. Stokes explained:'
Thinking about brain activity as a network of activity patterns, rather than behaviour of single neurons.
'The team looked at studies of the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that is crucial for working memory.
Damage to this area of the brain can affect memory and our ability to perform tasks.
#Researchers Discover Missing Link Between Brain and Immune system Scientists have discovered a previously unknown connection between the brain
and immune system that could result in drastic breakthroughs in treatment for diseases, such as Alzheimer. Researchers at the University of Virginia have discovered that blood vessels directly connect the brain to the body immune system.
These blood vessels were thought never to have existed, despite the extensive research done on the lymphatic system. The findings were published online in Nature. his discovery is important
because the brain is an immune privilege organ, study author Antoine Louveau, Ph d.,a postdoctoral fellow at the University Of Virginia School of medicine, told Bioscience Technology. ecently,
we have seen that the areas that are surrounding the brain are full of immune cells, even in normal conditions,
and that those immune cells are important in maintaining brain function. The discovery of those vessels mean that we are starting to understand how those areas work together
and that is one of the reasons the brain is privileged immune, Louveau said. hen we started our project,
if there are so many immune cells surrounding the brain, how do they traffic there? By addressing this question we found vessels that weren supposed to exist.
which is characterized by an accumulation of protein in the brain, Louveau said. e think that protein might start to accumulate in the meninges
if any, the vessels play in everyday brain function. e know that the immune cells around the brain seem to be important for normal brain function
and we are going to address the question of how these vessels effect that normal brain function,
Louveau said. hey might have a role in normal brain physiology, but this is something we are going to work on
Nup153, researchers discovered, put the brakes on certain genes that need to be turned on for stem cells to turn into brain cells.
which are thought commonly of as having the ability to develop into many type of brain cells, are preprogrammed in reality before birth to make very specific types of neurons, at least in mice,
In mouse brains, as in human brains, adult neural stem cells reside on the walls of cavities called ventricles,
which are filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Using sophisticated DNA tagging techniques, Alvarez-Buylla and his team traced the development of mouse adult neural stem cells back to their embryonic progenitors.
They found that most neural stem cells are produced when the mouse embryo is between 13 and 15 days old,
uite early in embryonic brain development, said Alvarez-Buylla, and then remain quiescent until reactivated later in life.
it turns out that their role in the brain has been determined partly already before birth. The researchers had another surprise,
the scientists found that the mouse adult neural stem cells they studied are derived from embryonic neural stem cells that produce neurons in entirely different parts of the brain. his means that, somehow,
these cells go through a period of neuron production for the embryonic brain and then switch to a different mode and produce cells that get set apart to become adult neural cell progenitors,
mouse brains have long been accepted as excellent basic research models for the human brain, he said.
Alvarez-Buylla also noted that the paper has possible implications for the success of human stem cell therapy in the brain
if we don understand the embryology of the brain, going back to the origins of specific nerve cell types,
The treatment approach developed at UNC uses a genetically modified virus called AAV to deliver a missing gene, the gigaxonin gene (scaav9/Jet-GAN), into the cerebrospinal fluid of children with GAN.
This trial is the first in history to deliver gene therapy through the spinal fluid to test the potential to achieve broad treatment of the spinal cord and brain (central nervous system or CNS.
which nerve cells of the spinal cord and brain need to be targeted, including spinal muscular atrophy. Bringing such path-breaking treatments to children affected by neurogenetic disorders is really the core mission of our team here at the NINDS
which will be given by a single injection by spinal tap into their cerebrospinal fluid, which flows around the brain and spinal cord.
Source: University of North carolina at Chapel Hil r
#Microarray for Research into Haematological and Solid Cancers Oxford Gene Technology (OGT) released a new microarray designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of cancer research.
#Scientists Develop Model for Robots with Bacterial Brains Forget the Vulcan mind-meld of the Star trek generation as far as mind control techniques go,
"We found that robots may indeed be able to function with a bacterial brain, he said.
Potentially, the material could benefit clinical use in the treatment of the heart, liver and brain
New research indicates that Parkinson's disease may begin in the gastrointestinal tract and spread through the vagus nerve to the brain."
and affect the brain, "she says. The research project has just been published in the internationally recognised journal Annals of Neurology.
The first clinical examination The research has presented strong evidence that Parkinson's disease begins in the gastrointestinal tract and spreads via the vagus nerve to the brain.
A team of researchers at the Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface (CNBI headed by José del R. Millán,
has however been working on a revolutionary brain-machine approach in order to restore a sense of independence to the disabled.
dedicated to brain-machine interfaces. 19 people tested, 100%success rate Nine disabled people and ten healthy people in Italy,
each of the subjects put on an electrode-studded hat capable of analysing their brain signals. They then instructed the robot to move,
Shared control between human and machine The brain-machine interface developed by the researchers goes even further.
Mature technology available The positive results of this research bring to a close the European project called TOBI (Tools for Brain-Computer Interaction
and a drug for multiple sclerosis to control immune response in the brain. Under the two approaches, immune cells from outside the brain were found to travel in greater numbers through the blood into the brain.
The study showed measurable benefits in mice an encouraging step toward further testing of these potentially powerful strategies in human trials.
Researchers point out that the brain's own immune cells are critical for its healthy function.
In this study, the researchers discovered that immune cells infiltrating the brain from the blood effectively resisted various abnormalities associated with the condition."
"These cells appear to work in the brain in several ways to counter the negative effects associated with Alzheimer's disease,
and the senior author of the article published in Brain, a journal of Oxford university Press."
Immune cells in the brain that are exposed to increasing concentrations of the toxic protein fragment deteriorate
During the course of the disease, cells that support the brain's structure and function also fail at the cellular and molecular levels,
the drug has been shown to foster the migration of white blood cells from the bloodstream to the brain.
The varied approaches were effective in"recruiting"protective monocytes to"lesion sites"in the brain,
can migrate into the brains of sick mice, directly clear abnormal protein accumulation and preserve cognitive function,"said Yosef Koronyo,
Koronyo added that the study gives unprecedented details about monocyte numbers migrating into brain lesion sites
the pancreas and the pituitary gland. Animal studies previously linked this gene mutation with breast cancer; and the researchers further conducted an analysis of the utchmen1 Study Groupdatabase.
and a few single amino acids function as signal-carrying neurotransmitters in the brain. Just twenty-one different amino acids are found in human proteins
Then it combines the two into a dictionary in its digital brain. It then references this to answer new questions about never-before-seen images.
predict weather It seems three monkey brains are better than one when it comes to performing simple tasks using only the power of thought.
Scientists at Duke university wired the brains of adult rhesus macaque monkeys to form a network,
they were able to synchronize their brain activity to guide the arm of an avatar, allowing them to reach for a virtual ball.
However, in a second set of experiments, the team directly wired the brains of four rats together,
and to a computer, to allow the animals to transmit neural brain activity to each other. The team outfitted the animals with multi-electrode arrays in the motor and somatosensory (sense of touch) cortices to capture
and transmit their brain activity. The rats were able to recognize patterns in brain activity and a"brain-to-brain interface"was established.
Solved weather problems Some of the input or stimulation, represented data that included temperature and barometric pressure.
The rats were encouraged then, through a reward system, to solve a simple weather forecasting problem, such as whether it might rain.
Duke scientists say the results support earlier claims that brainets"may serve as test beds for the development of organic computers created by the interfacing of multiple animal brains with computers."
"Lead researcher Duke university Medical center neurobiologist Miguel Nicolelis reported on the first direct brain-to-brain interface between animals two years ago.
After experimenting with brain-to-machine interfaces for several years, he and his colleagues found the brain was much more plastic than they had thought.
Scientists said that with practice, the monkeys were easily able to mentally control two out of three dimensions of the virtual arm.
Applications for disabled people The Duke researchers have built previously BMIS (brain-machine interfaces) to capture
and transmit the brain signals of individual rats, monkeys, and even human subjects to artificial devices."
"This is the first demonstration of a shared brain-machine interface, a paradigm that has been translated successfully over the past decades from studies in animals all the way to clinical applications,
including brain cells, cartilage bone and muscle cells. From the neural crest cell point, the team coaxed the cells to grow into dermal papillae cells,
The implant called e-Dura is designed to be implanted directly onto the brain or spinal cord underneath the dura mater the membrane that encloses the brain and spinal cord.
Its mechanical properties--flexible and stretchy--are almost identical to those of the living tissue enclosing it vastly reducing the risk of inflammation friction and abrasion.
much as the brain does. Meanwhile a fluidic microchannel in the implant delivers neurotransmitting drugs to reanimate the nerve cells beneath the injured tissue.
While this operates in concert to circumvent the injured site on the spine allowing the patient--theoretically--to use their limbs it can also be used to monitor electrical impulses from the brain in real-time allowing the researchers to accurately gauge the patient's intention to move before the signal is translated into motion.
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